GIGABYTE Z370 AORUS Ultra Gaming Review

👤by David Mitchelson  Comments 📅05-10-17

Test Setup, Methodology & Overclocking

Test Setup

CPU Intel Core i7-8700K
Cooling Corsair H100i GTX
Motherboard GIGABYTE Z370 AORUS Ultra Gaming
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz
Graphics GIGABYTE GTX 1080 G1 Gaming
Storage OCZ Vector 180 240GB SSD
PSU Corsair HX1050 80 Plus Gold Certified PSU
Monitor AOC U2879VF
Capture Device Epiphan AV.iO 4K

Benchmarks

Cinebench R15 – CPU/OpenGL Score
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA – CPU & Memory benchmarks
POV-RAY – CPU benchmarks
TrueCrypt – CPU benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks & Memory
PCMark 8 – Home Suite & Photoshop
3DMark FireStrike – 3D Benchmark
Games – Civilization IV & Total War: WARHAMMER

Other Software

Temperature Analysis: Real Temp
Stress Testing Software: AIDA64 Stability Test
CPU Specification Monitoring: CPU-Z

Overclocking

Like previous generations, the Intel Core i7-8700K is unlocked and also has flexible attributes in terms of the BCLK and ratio/multiplier. This makes the job of overclocking much easier.

We actually used this motherboard to review the Intel Core i7-8700K as it was able to give us the best overclock out of the bunch of motherboards we tested. Our achievement saw us hit 5GHz @ 1.37v. We were able to nudge the frequency above 5GHz but unfortunately were weren’t able to accomplish any stability, even by applying more voltage.

So, this demonstrates how capable this motherboard is – it can be regarded as a superb motherboard for overclocking and squeezing the most out of your 8th generation processor.